The Black Prince Postscript by Rachel Summary

  • Rachel's postscript to "The Black Prince" begins by stating unequivocally that the book "is a sort of mad adolescent fantasy" written by the man who murdered her husband (Postscript by Rachel: par. 1).
  • As it proceeds, Rachel's postscript offers a very different interpretation of Bradley Pearson from the one that Bradley himself, P. Loxias, and Francis Marloe have presented to us.
  • In Rachel's view, Bradley is "a 'Peter Pan' type"—a man with "juvenile" tastes in literature who reads boys' adventure stories far more than literary classics by the likes of Shakespeare and Homer (Postscript by Rachel: par. 4).
  • Rachel also refutes Bradley's description of his physical appearance, along with his description of his relationship with the Baffin family. She makes him out to be an undignified and pathetic figure who latched onto the Baffin family well after Arnold had become famous.
  • As for Bradley's love affair with Julian—Rachel argues that it was nothing more than a fantasy that he dreamed up, and, most importantly, that it was actually motivated by his love for her.
  • As she draws the postscript to a close, Rachel levels her most severe criticisms at P. Loxias rather than at Bradley himself. Whereas Bradley can hardly be blamed for retreating into a fantasy world, she argues, Loxias should certainly be criticized for engineering the publication of Bradley's fantasies.
  • Rachel also speculates on Loxias's identity and argues that he is in all likelihood a fellow inmate in the prison where Bradley now resides—"a notorious rapist and murderer, a well-known musical virtuoso, whose murder, by a peculiarly horrible method, of a successful fellow-musician made the headlines some considerable time ago" (Postscript by Rachel: par. 12).